unable now to face Hannibal in the
open field, would have been to wait till the second army, which had
now become completely superfluous at Ariminum, should arrive. He
himself, however, judged otherwise. He was a political party leader,
raised to distinction by his efforts to limit the power of the senate;
indignant at the government in consequence of the aristocratic
intrigues concocted against him during his consulship; carried away,
through a doubtless justifiable opposition to their beaten track of
partisanship, into a scornful defiance of tradition and custom;
intoxicated at once by blind love of the common people and equally
bitter hatred of the party of the nobles; and, in addition to all
this, possessed with the fixed idea that he was a military genius.
His campaign against the Insubres of 531, which to unprejudiced
judges only showed that good! soldiers often repair the errors
of bad generals,(2) was regarded by him and by his adherents as an
irrefragable proof that the Romans had only to put Gaius Flaminius at
the head of the army in order to make a speedy end of Hannibal. Talk
of this sort had procured for him his second consulship, and hopes of
this sort had now brought to his camp so great a multitude of unarmed
followers eager for spoil, that their number, according to the
assurance of sober historians, exceeded that of the legionaries.
Hannibal based his plan in part on this circumstance. So far from
attacking him, he marched past him, and caused the country all around
to be pillaged by the Celts who thoroughly understood plundering,
and by his numerous cavalry. The complaints and indignation of the
multitude which had to submit to be plundered under the eyes of the
hero who had promised to enrich them, and the protestation of the
enemy that they did not believe him possessed of either the power
or the resolution to undertake anything before the arrival of his
colleague, could not but induce such a man to display his genius
for strategy, and to give a sharp lesson to his inconsiderate
and haughty foe.

Battle on the Trasimene Lake

No plan was ever more successful. In haste, the consul followed the
line of march of the enemy, who passed by Arezzo and moved slowly
through the rich valley of the Chiana towards Perugia. He overtook
him in the district of Cortona, where Hannibal, accurately informed
of his antagonist's march, had had full time to select his field of
battle--a narrow defile betwee